In Robot Suicide: Death, Identity, and AI in Science Fiction, Liz W Faber blends cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, and medical sciences to show how fictional robots hold up a mirror to our cultural perceptions about suicide and can help us rethink real-world policies regarding mental health. For decades, we’ve been asking whether we could make a robot live; but a new question is whether a living robot could make itself die. And if it could, how might we humans react? Suicide is a longstanding taboo in Western culture, particularly in relationship to mental health, marginalized identities, and individual choice. But science fiction offers us space to tackle the taboo by exploring whether and under what circumstances robots—as metaphorical stand-ins for humans—might choose to die. Faber looks at a broad range of science fiction, from classics like The Terminator franchise to recent hits like C. Robert Cargill’s novel Sea of Rust.

Taking a broad interpretation of "supernatural" to include anything beyond nature, Global Perspectives on the Liminality of the Supernatural examines the liminality of often-overlooked types of supernatural beings in light of the themes of death and gender. It gives the reader a tour of the continents and takes them out into space, looking at popular culture and mythologies to propose answers to fundamental anthropological questions about humanity, the concept of "dead," and how we relate to our own genders when using the supernatural to understand them.

A deconstruction of gender through the voices of Siri, HAL 9000, and other computers that talk Although computer-based personal assistants like Siri are increasingly ubiquitous, few users stop to ask what it means that some assistants are gendered female, others male. Why is Star Trek’s computer coded as female, while HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey is heard as male? By examining how gender is built into these devices, author Liz W. Faber explores contentious questions around gender: its fundamental constructedness, the rigidity of the gender binary, and culturally situated attitudes on male and female embodiment. Faber begins by considering talking spaceships like those in Star Trek, the film Dark Star, and the TV series Quark, revealing the ideologies that underlie space-age progress. She then moves on to an intrepid decade-by-decade investigation of computer voices, tracing the evolution from the masculine voices of the ’70s and ’80s to the feminine ones of the ’90s and ’00s. Faber ends her account in the present, with incisive looks at the film Her and Siri herself. Going beyond current scholarship on robots and AI to focus on voice-interactive computers, The Computer’s Voice breaks new ground in questions surrounding media, technology, and gender. It makes important contributions to conversations around the gender gap and the increasing acceptance of transgender people. 

THERE was once a time, though alas it is many hundred years since, when the Holy Catholic Church was a glorious building, all one, like the seamless vest of her Master, Christ. The remote cities of Egypt and Syria, Greece and Rome, Gaul and Britain, were all one body, in one Lord, one faith, one baptism. The voice of discord was scarcely heard within her. Heresy found no resting-place within the sanctuary. The Church was like the New Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all. East and west, north and south, continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. These were happy times, a great deal too happy to last. It was a state of things too unlike this world; and it was easy to see, that as soon as ever the Church and the world became friends, one or other of the two must become very much altered: and as we all know that the world is very pliable, and has a way of seeming to give up a great deal, while in fact it gives up nothing at all, it was most probable that the Church would be the sufferer. Thus it turned out. She left her first love, and so the glories of her candlestick were dimmed. It is not necessary for my purpose, as practical to ourselves, to follow her course as she journeyed from east to west. Long time abode we in Rome, doing as Rome bid us, albeit she was a hard task-mistress.